In the Wastes
by Mataspore
Summary: After committing an act of blatant treason against the Imperium of Man the rogue psyker Thrope aims to have his gang melt away into the vast power wastes, but the wastes will prove to be as deadly - if not more so - as any servant of the corpse-emperor.
1. Chapter 1

**The Black Ship**

They are there to die. Torn from their homes due to a quirk of birth utterly beyond their control, thousands of souls – the scummy edge of what could eventually result in the either the salvation of the galaxy or (far more likely) its destruction. Their souls flicker in the warp, stronger than most – but a tiny spark to a supernova when compared to the searing light of the astronomican. A light that they will soon die to feed.

Across the galaxy soar thousands of these ships, identical in form, function, destination and quiet malice. They collect their due from a hundred worlds, they deliver their harvest of flesh to Terra, and they leave to acquire yet more of their terrible cargo. Any denizen of the warp would pay all that it had and more to gain entry to even one of these horrific leviathans – a daemon that made it inside would glut itself on the thousands of unprotected souls therein and run rampant with the titanic surge of power it would bring.

But the Daemons cannot enter, for the Black Ships are protected from their touch. Arcane Sigils and unswerving faith prove anathema to the warp-touch of such depraved creatures – any Daemon unlucky enough to even brush against such a hulk as it split the warp would find its essence scattered in burning agony to the four winds.

Though a few points must be made – that it is not _only _monsters that haunt the warp. That not all go to this demise willingly. And that this ship...this ship is different from the others.

Perhaps it is the fact that a few amongst its grisly cargo have determined that they will _not _be dying to feed a gods corpse. Perhaps it is the quietly fluttering presence of a warp-entity against which the ships protections do not seem to function. Perhaps it is that one of the few unautomated guards is not a guard at all.

The main difference though? That is fairly likely to be the fact that the other ships do not have two small nuclear devices discreetly strapped to the underside of each of their warp drive initiators.

***BOOM***

And one of the shipment – a man who should have been chained firmly to his seat – stands up, and – with a gun he _really _should not have – shoots the nearest guard. Several times. He seems to find it rather satisfying.

The crippled ships response is immediate, overwhelming, deadly...and exactly as predicted. Seven combat servitors move to immediately cleanse the entire sector as the ships captain brings up the display that will allow him to flood that deck of the ship with an impressively dangerous gas. But five of the servitors are immediately boxed in with a raging wall of fire as another man – this one with odd scars criss-crossing his palms – waves his left hand. At the same time the guard who is not a guard blows the head off of the one nearest him. The remaining servitor attempts to turn and blast the psyker holding back its comrades – but finds itself held in place by a well-muscled arm that appears to be shedding copious amounts of false-flesh. The arm belongs to another man who – unlike the others – does indeed have both hands chained firmly to the floor, fortunate that he has an extra one really.

The captain meanwhile finds himself a little distracted from the duty of purging the floor – but in fairness to the poor bugger it should be pointed out that having a long rifle with a scythe blade attached to its barrel emerge from the ceiling, swing underneath your neck and jerk back hard enough to completely separate your head from your shoulders _does _constitute one hell of a distraction.

Action on the part of the ships crew is further hampered by the appearance – seemingly out of nowhere – of swarming ripperjacks, all of whom appear to be moving according to the whims of a single dancing woman who twirls twin pistols in her hands and takes every available opportunity to prove she knows how to use them. Anybody who does manage to get close enough to draw a bead on the laughing maniac either finds that their shots go terribly awry – or that she simply vanishes from sight moments before they would pull the trigger.

Meanwhile the servitors who were previously trapped in a wall of fire ready themselves for heavy combat as it falls...and find themselves facing a tidal-wave of flesh as hundreds of sacrificial victims swarm them with bare hands, swinging chains and the strength that only desperate hope can bring.

The man who previously took such pleasure in gunning down a guardsman leads the group from the first room towards what can only be presumed to have been a pre-arranged rendezvous point. To say that they encounter no resistance would be a lie...but said resistance that they do encounter seems to have an unnerving habit of bursting into flames. And when they finally run into a heavily armed group of another three servitors the man promptly becomes wreathed in white hot fire and dives right in to the centre of the group – the sheer heat of his body proving sufficient to turn aside blows and turn even the lightest of his touches into burning death. You'd almost want to feel sorry for the servitors.

Arriving at the ships escape pods the group is soon joined by the chittering swarm of ripperjacks, as well as their apparent matriarch. A young girl of no more than 12 sits on her shoulder, she smiles and waves to the first group...but her eyes gleam an unnatural shade of red and green and her pupils seem to be diagonal slits – like those of a cat but tilted about 45degrees. No words are spoken, no words really need be said. Unlike many potential rebels of the imperium these people are well aware of exactly what they have just done. And they are absolutely fine with it. The group marches along the row of ships, searching for a specific one.

They find it, escape pod no.2375. But it is not unoccupied. The final member of the group sits atop it, his biotic legs finding impossible grip upon the smooth surface as he lounges nonchalantly against the tailfin. This one is clearly not human, his largely exposed torso is scaled and his arms give an impression of whipcord strength, in place of a mouth he instead has a large and powerful beak, a crest of feather-like protrusions taking the place of hair. One arm holds the blood-encrusted rifle, the other holds a delicious snack. That said snack is apparently the head of the deceased captain appears to be neither here nor there. He throws the partially eaten head away as the group approaches and jumps to the ground, landing far more silently than his weighty legs should really allow.

Noticing their avian ally the man whom we can by now presume to be the leader smiles. It is not a terribly attractive smile but that is mostly because he is not a very attractive man. But it is the alien who at last breaks the silence.

"Thrope." His voice rasps as if the throat that it uttered from were made of sandpaper – but there is respect in that tone as well. "Almost thought I would not be meeting." He sniffs the air, "never will understand stupid custom of cooking, no wonder you never eat properly."

"Taka," replies the surprisingly deep-voiced man now known as Thrope as he grasps a proffered hand and gives it a hearty shake. "How many times must I tell you that there really is more to life than food?" He lets loose a snort of what could conceivably be judged to be laughter and the not terribly attractive smile becomes an outrightly terrifying grin that exposes a row of crystal clean teeth. "And I – like always – knew that you wouldn't let us down." He gestures to the surrounding area "you think this little beauty will cover your fee? I'll be sending a coded flare once we're out'a here. Your friends can mop up anything left on this ship without too much trouble. An' if I'm any judge of the human character they'll likely get themselves a good few converts into the bargain. Wouldn't worry bout the remaining command chain callin' fer help either – ye'd be surprised just how much damage a single ripperjack can do to a load a' wires, and we ad' a ole bloody swarm of em'."

Taka drops his jaw in what likely constitutes a smile and confirms that once his friends in blue pick up the crippled ship he'll be serving with them for the foreseeable future. The group piles in to the pod, the three-armed man draws the door closed and punches in a memorised sequence of numbers and coded symbols and the pod drops free into space.


	2. Chapter 2

**Some Months Later**

The carcass of the black ship has long since been taken by Taka's friends in blue, the few surviving sacrifices have mostly chosen to go over to the side of their rescuers – they know what awaits them if they happen to fall into the hands of the Imperium once again. As does the man called Thrope.

The followers of a dying god-emperor know precisely who is responsible for the loss of one of their precious harvesters. Thrope left a most derogatory message aboard several of the remaining escape pods – most of which were used by the surviving crew-members. In said message he made several references to various orifices of the high lords of Terra as well as acts he may or may not have performed with their mothers. Though it is likely the detailed schematics, security codes and crew timetable of the black ship that he provided are slightly more responsible for the huge manhunt now taking place than whether he did or did not truly manage to get an entire egg-whisk up there.

A man who knows this much is an unforgivable security risk to the paranoid masters of mankind. Thrope has signed his death warrant, as well as those of his crew, his family, his pet goldfish Mr. Squig and any one of the hundreds of innocent (for a given value of innocent) people he may have at some time come into contact with.

Or he would have, if they knew where any of those people actually were.

Thrope has taken his crew to one of the few places in the galaxy that the Imperial Hammer fears to destroy, and that the lightning strikes of the Astartes disdain as beneath their efforts to purge. He has taken them to the Wastes.

The wastes are an odd place. Though the taint of chaos has no more hold on them than it has on Terra itself one could be forgiven for assuming this to not be the case. The wastes consist of several planets elliptically orbiting a binary star in a series of complicated patterns that would send anyone with even a basic grasp of astrology running for almost any other star system. The planets routinely come within celestial inches of each other as they violently swing around the two rotating stars at their centre, completing a full orbit almost twice the length of Terra's in roughly half the time. The path of each planet is almost identical to any other – separated only by the spatial plane they happen to be occupying. The overall visual effect could be likened to that of watching impossibly huge electrons dance their way around a nucleus – if anyone actually knew what those things were anymore of course.

Conventional wisdom says that the wastes simply should not work. Any sort of orbital decay should send the planets smashing into each other with the force of an entire Imperial fleets firepower. According to many hundreds of scholars the odds of this not having yet happened are astronomical, and the odds of it happening very soon a near certainty. And yet disaster consistently refuses to appear. The best of minds have puzzled, the most through analysis have been done. Every result says that this is a system which cannot possibly survive for much longer than a standard Imperial year. And still the wastes continue to exist, still they spin in their impossible orbits, still they befuddle the minds of any who try to puzzle them out... And still they generate such terrible fluctuations in any ships gravimetric sensors that any vessel weighing in at more than 1000 tonnes simply cannot approach them without sending themselves hurtling toward burning death in the heart of a star.

What amounts to basic immunity to the Imperial war-machine has made the wastes a positive haven for the more undesirable elements throughout the galaxy. Hive cities tied by the thinnest of threads to imperial loyalty dot the planets, their inhabitants trusting in blind luck for things to stay the same – and for their distance from imperial retribution to protect them from the consequences of their actions. They make their living selling off the scrapings of the ruins which fill the planets. Ruins that are filled to bursting with arcane and alien technology, ruins whose smallest room could hold untold riches for any able to discover them. Ruins that all but guarantee the death of any who deign to enter them. The most pristine examples maintain self-constructing systems of deadly traps, where the traps no longer function they are instead filled with all manner of unpleasant creatures – the original inhabitants of the wastes. And anywhere these creatures are not present is all but guaranteed to be the base of operations for any number of gangs.

And what gangs they are. The dregs of the galaxy war with the pristine armour of Imperial strike teams, demented cults following those infected with the genestealer ideals clash with the even more insane followers of daemonic chaos, from high atop the towers of the Hive cities the dreaded Spyre gangers launch their raids in a thunderstorm of firepower and pristine technological superiority, whilst Tau snipers trade fire with Eldar rangers as two strike forces from near opposite alien races collide.

Any two gangs will have but a few things in common. They will be dangerous, they will know the wastes like the back of whatever appendages they have at the end of their arms, they will have an agenda, and they will _not forgive _any attempt to interfere.

Thrope's gang is one of the very best. Not by reputation, not by membership and not by territory held. Thrope's gang is one of the best for the simple reason that each and every one of them has a full and complete understanding of what they are doing – and what could happen if even one of them should fall.

They call themselves the Masticators.

It is a strange name, at least one member of their gang doesn't really chew at all. And it hardly succeeds in driving away competition. Those few who happen to know what the word means are vastly outnumbered by those all too happy to apply a most amusing mistranslation. Which is exactly what Thrope wants. With a name he has turned his gang into a joke, with a name he has insured that they become subjects of ridicule, with a name he has opened the floodgates to a veritable tidal wave of _provocation_.

Imperial forces keep an eye out for anyone looking to "rule the world," any gang that seems a might overeager to expand becomes a threat – and threats have to be looked at far more closely. But Thrope's gang has never made a single effort to expand, all they do – all they ever _have _to do – is defend their good name.

When a junkie in the folds of the Flame Bandits wondered aloud whether they helped "masticate each other" Thrope poured a tankers worth of napalm into the ruins they were based in and personally kept it burning for 3 days. When the leader of the RawHides maliciously quizzed Taka on how many times a day he performed the act Taka calmly and carefully explained that he himself did not in fact chew at all – before slicing off said leaders feet and turning him in for a substantial bounty. When the hulking behemoth of the Bears gang offered a very decent price for their youngest member in order to aid his teams "masticatory needs" the entire gang were found dead the very next day, with bloated ripperjacks resting next to each corpse.

This continues for some time. Thrope has never once instigated a fight, he has never been anything but polite and fair in his dealings with others, and he has never failed to take advantage of every insult thrown his way. That the Masticators often acquire the territories of those that fall victim to their utterly justifiable anger is seen as nothing more than justice in the jaded eyes of what few authorities serve to watch the wastes.

And all the while, they are watched.


	3. Chapter 3

**Precursor**

Thrope's gang now controls five major territories (a number that many of the gangs in the wastes can barely dream of). Three of them are nothing to get too excited about. Two near-identical lots of ruins, miles apart in distance yet only able to be told apart via what sort of destruction has been visited upon them throughout however many aeons they have existed. And a small mercantile town that is more than happy to pay the occasional tribute – mostly due to Thrope requiring money and supplies as opposed to several dozen vials of virgin blood and a newborn child every six months.

But the final two territories are the major prize. The sadly deceased Bears gangers had possession of Lake Agis, a massive (for the wastes) body of near-pristine water, negating the need to pay the exorbitant prices set for purification equipment and providing a constant (and appreciably large) source of income via the sale of water, fish and the occasional many-faced tentacled monstrosity split from the twisted veins of the elder ones in the time before time was. It turns out that the last one actually tastes very good when chargrilled.

And the jewel in the crown? That is the Archeotech Horde. A massive underground system of vaults and tunnels filled to near-bursting with technological wonders the like of which have not been seen since the golden age. Walls slide open to reveal racks of pristine weaponry, rooms filled with archaic suits of powered armour seem almost eager to be discovered, banks of archives impart secrets that the Imperium would burn a hundred worlds to see destroyed, strange devices seem to spin perfect food out of near-nothingness...and that was only in the first level. Even Thrope doesn't know how far down the entire complex goes.

In fact it's a bit of a mystery how Thrope knew about the Horde at all. There's no sign of it on the surface, opening the single small entrance requires a pattern of stamps and an intonation of a language no living being now calls its first. At which point a small manhole shimmers into existence beneath the stampers feet. Thrope hints that getting the words wrong can have...unpleasant consequences, but he will not speak on how he knows any of this. The gang doesn't press him on the subject. Their possession of the Horde remains a closely guarded secret.

Then they get a message.

As first contacts go it's pretty friendly. An Eldar strike force – their leader gave his name but Thrope's never been very good at those weird invisible syllables the kooky language requires – has been observing the gang for some time now. They apparently like what they see. A suggestion is put forward. The Eldar have observed a merchant vessel crashing into the planet (the subject of _why _it crashed is gently danced around) and wish to enlist assistance in a salvage operation – seeing as they themselves are not familiar with that specific area of the wastes. They're apparently willing to go 50/50 on the profits, and provided they move fast it's unlikely anyone else will beat them to the site. When Thrope asks how they can be so sure they'll get there first the reply is simply because the vessel hasn't started crashing yet.

Eldar are weird.

Still – it's a good offer. The problem is that this will _not _be a retaliatory strike, and Thrope thinks things are still too soon to risk provoking too much attention. But if the cargo is as valuable as was stated...the risk may well be worth it.

Thrope puts it to the gang.

Chaka is no help. The man with the scarred palms makes it clear that he'll be following Thrope in whatever decision he happens to make.

Slick is a little more opinionated. Specifically the three-armed man is of the opinion that the Eldar are pansies (not quite as racist as it sounds - he applies this moniker to almost anyone outside of the gang) and that the gang shouldn't get involved with them. Though he has to acknowledge that a merchant vessel sounds damn tempting.

Wiki scratches one of her devoted ripperjacks behind what could charitably be called its ears and says that it's hardly worth going if they're not going to get to kill anything.

Blocka simply shrugs his massive shoulders, smiles and goes back to getting his needle rifle to better than pristine condition.

Taka states his view that the Eldar can only ever be trusted to not do whatever you are trusting them to do. Then he says that they absolutely should go, he's always wanted to see just how fast an Eldar actually is.

Chiku stares fixedly at the ceiling, snaps her fingers twice, temporarily vanishes from sight and then uses her left fist to give a single sharp nod.

They're in.

The Eldar give the time and place, a week from now in the ruins of Foden – it used to be a small village. The gang start making their way there.

They arrive in time to see the Eldar step out of what appears to be thin air. It's an interesting sight. The leader hefts an impressive longsword and manages to make his ridiculous long-helm look imposing. Next to him stand a crimson-clad figure about whom flickers traces of eldritch flame and a half-visible shade carrying what looks to be a more graceful version of Blocka's rifle. The lithe figure of a howling banshee can be seen a short distance away – along with an entirely deliberate gleam off a ledge that suggests the presence of a sniper.

Very few words are exchanged, Thrope insists upon smiling ferociously and the Eldar leader evidently finds the idea of being near a mon-keigh for any length of time repellent. They stay talking for just about long enough to re-establish the terms of agreement. Thrope's smile becomes slightly brighter, the Eldar leader inclines his head. They go to shake hands...

And Chiku exhales a sharp breath from between her teeth as the crimson eldar spins in place. Both teams leap for cover.

Taka, Thrope, Wiki and Chaka swing themselves atop an old landing pad to the south-east. It's connected to a northern building complex via a series of walkways – but for now they crouch behind the barricades surrounding the pad.

Blocka meanwhile sprints to a south-western tower – finding himself sharing the accommodation with a somewhat annoyed eldar ranger as they both set themselves into a good sniping position.

Slick goes underneath the landing pad, readying a wicked looking blade in two of his hands and a needle-pistol in the third.

Chiku breathes in, breathes out and vanishes from sight, the red and green points of her unnatural eyes the last thing to fade.

Someone else is here.

With a roar akin to thunder five red blurs smash into the north-east of town, the dust eventually settling to reveal the cold visage of a Spyre gang – no doubt lured by the sight of the crashing vessel. Their blood-coloured armour positively writhes with weaponry and upgrades as they regard the ruins of Foden with their signature contempt.

The Tau arrive far more quietly, suits of tau power-armour gliding into a dilapidated three-story building in the north-west of town, protruding rifle tips making their intention very clear.

There's going to be a big fight.

And Thrope has not stopped smiling.


	4. Chapter 4

**Bloodied Fangs**

Thrope _should _be in a very bad mood. His gang is about to be thrown into a battle they did not expect, his allies are hardly guaranteed to be of any use, the opposing side more than equals them in firepower and what the Spyre's will do to them if they lose doesn't really bear thinking about.

So yes, Thrope _should _be in a bad mood.

But...

The involvement of Spyres means that the odds of this battle being officially recorded are slim to none, the Tau have been nice enough to place themselves inside a single building, Thrope's gang _could _use the exercise and Thrope can hardly deny that he's been itching for a real fight for some time now.

Plus, the Spyre's are really nothing more than well-equipped bullies – and Thrope likes fighting bullies.

Thrope is in a very good mood indeed.

Tau weaponry is amongst the most fearsome in the galaxy, a single round of concentrated fire from the Tau-occupied building would all but guarantee the death of whatever poor sod they happened to be targeting. Thrope knows this. So does Chaka.

And the man with the scarred palms waves his left hand.

An invisible knife of fantastic heat splits a massive wedge of air in front of the Tau shelter, smashing down from the empty sky to kick up a massive cloud of sand and dirt. A cloud that seems almost to crystallise as it rises – fragments of impure glass cascading back to the ground as the massive updraft generated by the heat fractures the light of the sun into a disorienting kaleidoscope across the sky. And as the lightshow fades fire erupts from the point of impact, sheeting upwards until an impossible wall of flames obscures the entire building from view.

Good luck firing through that.

Thrope takes a quick glance at Chaka. His eyes are glowing orange and the scars on his outstretched left hand are flickering green – but Chaka smiles right back, he can hold this for as long as it takes.

Blocka and the Eldar ranger both take careful aim. Two of the Spyre gangers find themselves impaled by identical small darts – but either the darts fail to penetrate or the toxin they contain fails to be effective. Both the Spyres remain annoyingly healthy, though the successful hits do manage to drive them into taking cover.

The Spyre leader spares his erstwhile Tau allies a glance before marching forward with the two of his gang who are not currently on the ground, his eyes locked on Chaka. He knows that downing the Psyker will cause the wall of fire to dissipate.

And Taka and Wiki know that this must not happen.

Taka's rifle blurs as he sprints towards the walkway, the Kroot letting lose a battle-shriek that shakes the air itself. Wiki simply runs silently forward, the professional way she holds her pistols at severe odds with the manic grin now formed on her lips.

The Spyre leader barely spares them a glance. A motion of his hands and the two following Spyres drop fluidly to their knees and raise their guns.

The first to fire is a woman, odd claw-like weapons on her wrists. An arm-mounted bolter sends a spray of bolts towards Wiki. She dodges and returns fire – but something flickers in the air between the Spyre and Wiki – and the bullets come shooting back in the opposite direction, catching Wiki in the shoulder and sending her crashing to the ground behind the launchpad barrier.

The second Spyre is a man, his weapon launching some form of net. It spreads itself into the air as it approaches Taka – but the bounty hunter drives his rifle into the ground with surprising force and catapults himself over the flying web to continue towards the Spyre leader. Who doesn't seem to be at all concerned by the Kroot charging towards him.

He should, perhaps, be more concerned about what may be happening _beneath _him.

As the leader steps onto the walkway he feels a slight impact against his knee. Looking down reveals a large needle emerging from the offending limb, and a grinning three-armed man standing on the ground below, pistol raised. But the leader doesn't really have time to respond to this as Taka takes this opportune moment to send a knockback round smashing into his chest. The concussive force of the ammo living up to its name and sending the leader stumbling backwards. Unhurt but rather seriously annoyed he glares at Taka – who ducks down out of the way, leaving the leader locking eyes with Thrope.

Thrope is still smiling.

And Thrope _knows _this man.

Oh not personally. Not by _name_. But he knows him nonetheless. A noble resident of the Hive Towers. Strong, well trained, amazingly equipped. Arrogant, cruel, utterly convinced of his right to treat everyone below his station as his personal playthings.

It's a conviction that has likely been driven into him since birth. It's a belief that Thrope intends to shatter.

To the leader it is as if a great weight were pressing against his mind. He freezes in place, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead as he desperately pushes back against the force. It lightens and he thinks the worst is over. But then Thrope's grin widens – and the leader comes to the terrible realisation that the smiling man _wasn't even trying_.

Thrope's gamble pays off. His psychic assault fractures the leaders mental defences. But Thrope isn't one for messy mental manipulation – he just needed a way in.

The leader erupts into a pillar of screaming fire. Flames of raw psychic energy burn around his heart at the same time as they flay the skin from his face, an unforgiving assault of pain and heat against which no armour is any sort of defence.

A charred ruin of a human being crashes to the ground.

The Spyre with the web-launcher takes another shot at Taka, this time the Kroot fails to avoid the shot and is sent crashing to the ground with a hiss of frustration – his struggles serving only to tighten the hold of the net.

The female Spyre runs towards her leaders body, likely intending to find out if he still lives. She finds this plan somewhat handicapped when an arm emerges from beneath the walkway, grabs her round the ankle and smacks her into the ground below. She recovers just in time to prevent imminent decapitation by rolling free of the reach of Slicks double swords and – claws out – charges into combat with the three-armed man.

A Howling Banshee Eldar readies herself to charge the two Spyres currently pinned down by Blocka and the Eldar ranger – before learning the slight downside to Chaka's wall of fire.

Namely, that whilst the enemy cannot see you – nor can you see them.

The Tau have moved.

The Howling Banshee takes the full force of a flamethrower at near point-blank range, her elaborate plume crumbling to ash as she falls to the ground and begins to gently steam.

A massive suit of Tau power-armour moves into view from behind the wall of fire, underneath both its arms are slung two of the biggest guns Thrope has ever seen. The head is unarmoured, revealing the Tau to be female – and rather pissed. She spins and raises one of the giant guns, sending a stream of superheated plasma into the roof of the building where Blocka and the ranger happen to be. The crumbling blocks of plascrete bringing an abrupt end to the pinning firepower from the two snipers. As she shouts something to the two Spyre's another suit of Tau armour emerges from behind the fire.

This one is about as different to the first as it could be. Sleek and agile where the first is bulky and powerful, it holds a wicked looking sword in either hand. A helmet obscures its face. The suit nods at a signal from the female Tau and darts underneath the building, heading towards Slick and the female Spyre.

The assistance is not required. The Spyre with the weblauncher has made it to his leader – and confirmed that he still lives. A quick communication and each Spyre hammers an area of their armour, personal teleporters whisking the entire gang out of the battlefield.

Slick – surprised at the sudden disappearance of his opponent – fails to notice the approach of the sword-armed Tau, and earns a vicious kick to the side of his head as a reward, he crumbles to the ground.

Blocka manages to pull his leg free from the collapsed building, he has no idea where the bloody ranger's got too. He pulls himself up to a new vantage point – and at a hand signal from Thrope positions himself to watch the fire-locked building.

Thrope has locked eyes with the first Tau. And come to the conclusion that this is a fight he does not want to be having. The Spyre leader simply believed himself to be inherently superior – an arrogance that made what mental defences he could produce incredibly brittle. But this Tau... this one is strong. Almost certainly the leader, self-confident without being egocentric, determined without being obsessed and – hidden beneath a veneer of military training – honestly truly not wishing to kill anybody. Thrope does not want to fight this one, he isn't sure that he can win.

So he starts walking forward. And smoke begins to rise from his skin. Smoke that is followed by fire. Thrope's entire being glows red, then white, as the temperature around him skyrockets. Leaving molten footprints in the floor of the landing pad he walks towards the Tau leader, stopping only to pass his hand through the web holding Taka in place, its odd fibres parting beneath his superheated grip.

Chaka drops the wall of fire.

Two shots emerge from Blocka's tower.

Two previously unseen Tau topple backwards, the needles in their respective necks rendering them immediately unconscious. Automatic systems in their suits activate – jetting the comatose Tau to safety.

Chaka runs to Wiki – who has utilised her unexpected lateral recumbency to invent several new swearwords. A red light emerges from Chaka's right palm as he presses it against her injured shoulder.

And Thrope proves an excellent distraction.

The Tau leader, justifiably focused on the walking pillar of fire approaching her, is taken by surprise as the Eldar leader at last makes his presence known, stepping out of thin air and discharging a fusion-pistol directly into the centre of her chestplate. The high-tech armour buckles under the heat, its contours warping and twisting as circuits spark and fry. It actually manages to save the Tau leaders life – just not by very much. She falls, a smoking crater taking up the front of her torso.

The Eldar leader turns to Thrope and sketches a shallow bow, before stepping back into empty space just in time to avoid a whistling power sword to the throat. The sword-wielding Tau having made it back from the encounter with Slick just in time to witness the confrontation. Denied vengeance the suit swings to face towards Thrope – and takes a pistol round to the face as Wiki pulls herself off of the floor, proud owner of a now fully functional shoulder.

The helmet flies off.

And Thrope's fire dies out.

Thrope gestures towards the downed leader, "not in the habit of slaughter for slaughters sake lass – get yerself outa here."

The human girl in a suit of Tau armour takes his advice. Wordlessly scooping up the leader and walking away.

They've won.

Nobody died.

Salvage is theirs for the taking.

And for the first time since the fight started – Thrope has stopped smiling.


	5. Chapter 5

**Madness**

_Now _Thrope is in a bad mood. The problem being that nobody else can quite figure out why this is. They're all alive, they kicked arse, they even got a hefty dose of salvage out of it – even after grudgingly (but honestly) splitting said salvage with the Eldar pirates who "helped" them. By all rights Thrope should be in high spirits.

So why does he look like a man who just took the mother of all sucker-punches to the gut?

Thrope isn't really in the mood to explain, and as nobody in the gang is feeling particularly suicidal they're not exactly in the mood to ask. Nonetheless _something _has to be done soon, Wiki and Chaka both remember the last time Thrope wore that expression for any length of time, and since retreating to a safe three mile radius isn't really an option they've been engaged in a busy battle of the stares to determine just which supremely unlucky sod gets to go and ask their leader what exactly is bothering him. The others won't do, Taka doesn't care, Blocka doesn't really go for talking and Chiku and Slick have both gone on ahead.

Chaka cheats.

Though in fairness – it is distinctly possible that he did not actually have any choice in the matter, what with the sudden emergence of a dart from his neck and the subsequent crumbling to the ground.

The Eldar are back.

And they're trying to be clever.

Clearly they believe that removing Chaka from the equation will give them the advantage, having simultaneously taken out the gangs best form of cover and main healer.

But two things seem to have not occurred to them. The first thing being that in the open clearing the gang finds themselves in Chaka's wall of fire would be of limited use at best. The second thing being that Thrope is in a very bad mood indeed – and that maybe, just maybe, in the previous battle? Thrope used Chaka's wall of fire as a reason to _not _just kill everyone.

That reason is no longer available.

The Eldar rise from cover, their leader emerges from the doorway of an old barn to the north, to the south-west now stand the crimson-clad warlock and a twin-power sword wielding Howling Banshee. The ranger who just incapacitated Chaka is somewhere to the east.

The gang is surrounded. And they have no cover.

And the Eldar leader is speaking. Anyone sane would listen. But Thrope can't hear him very well right now, not over the howling in his ears.

He is in a bad mood. And Thrope does not like being betrayed.

Thrope sinks to his knees next to Chaka, carefully removing the dart from his neck. Then he looks up, locking eyes with Wiki. And Thrope says the words that once would send an entire planet into wrenching spasms of utter terror, "Bolts off, go play."

And Wiki smiles.

It is not a good smile. Though it starts off like one. Wiki's actually quite pretty when she doesn't look like she's trying to kill you. But then the smile gets wider, and you might notice that Wiki's canines look just a little bit too long – and that the rest of her teeth have been filed into points.

And the expression keeps growing.

There's a sound like the tearing of wet paper as Wiki's cheeks split open to accommodate the spreading grin, an unnatural number of chiselled fangs springing forward as her face wrenches itself apart. Blood pouring from the ruined visage of a maniac. Her eyes glowing a deep red.

She throws back her head, and she screams. It is not a sound a human throat can make. By many definitions it is hardly a sound at all.

A wave of warp-laced noise, torn nails on a chalkboard, the sound a man makes when you gut him, the screeching whine of a rusted chainsaw, bone scraping on bone and the primal roar of some wretched beast.

It is a sound the galaxy has been privileged not to hear for far too many years. It is the sound that foretold the slaughter of a star system. It is the sound that broke the siege of TraLac. It is the sound that millions still hear in their darkest of nightmares.

It is the warcry of Wiki Al'Grash la'Shan, dog of the Tyrant Lord of For'Kesh.

And it says that she wants to _play_.

The Warlock and Howling Banshee have the supreme misfortune to be the closest targets. The Banshee readies her swords as the Warlock raises his pistol. But Wiki's dual pistols belch fire and the Banshees stomach blossoms like a gory flower.

The Warlock catches her as she falls, his hands already glowing the same way Chaka's did when he healed Wiki's shoulder. The horrific gut-wound knits itself shut in seconds and the Banshee reaches for her fallen swords – before Wiki fires again and the Banshees right hand and left foot are turned into ruined mockerys of appendages.

Again the healing hands of the Warlock manage to put his companion back together, and again Wiki sends two more rounds into the Banshee, this time it's the left hand and the right foot.

Wiki doesn't target the Warlock, she doesn't want to. While he's putting the Banshee back together he can't fire at her, if she wanted to she could easily put a round through both of their skulls. But Wiki hasn't ever had a toy that fixes itself before, and the waves of fear and agony slipping through the Warlocks control suffuse her being with a thrill it's been far too long since she last enjoyed. A quiet voice in the back of her head is analytically wondering how many times the cute little elf can be pulled back together before the strain simply shuts down her nervous system – but isn't too concerned with that little voice, she's far too busy drowning in the rapture of being free.

Besides, her pets prefer live food.

And the air thumps to the beat of hundreds of leathery wings.

…...

Blocka has his rifle out and ready almost as soon as Chaka hits the ground, peering down the scope in search of the Eldar Ranger he knows is somewhere to the east.

He can't see the bugger.

So Blocka takes a more direct route, simply placing his massive frame between Thrope and the general direction of the shot.

It works.

A dart slams into Blocka's neck. The weighted plunger injecting a medley of drugs straight into the big guys carotid artery.

Or...where the artery should be.

Blocka doesn't even bother to remove the dart, he just stands there, facing an unseen foe. And waiting.

Two more darts, this time to the chest. By all logic Blocka should be on the ground now. But he still stands. He still waits.

Another dart hits him square in the belly, that one at least elicits a grunt. But as Blocka rubs his sore gut with one hand the other hand rises in the direction of the shots. It forms a universally recognised gesture. It is a very rude gesture.

And - in the shadow of an old stone column – someone shifts to get a better shot.

Blocka's smile is far more restrained than Wiki's, a simple upcurve of the lips. And yet it somehow manages to be just as worrisome.

Blocka's rifle speaks, a gentle whisper streaks across the sandy ground. And no more darts come from the east.

The giant sits down, at last deigning to pull the darts from his skin. Eyes close as he at last allows the toxins pumping through his system to take hold. He has done his duty, it is up to the others now.

…...

Taka is sprinting towards the Eldar leader as soon as the bastard comes out of the barn. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that Taka honestly does want to see just how fast an Eldar actually is. The second (and far more motivational) reason is that Taka _was _listening when the Eldar leader gave his name – and now he remembers where he's heard that name before.

And the instincts of a bounty hunter are _screaming_.

The Eldar leader manages about a sentence before noticing that nobody is listening to him. The fusion pistol that caused such extensive damage to the Tau leader comes up – and flies violently to the right as Taka's Kroot Rifle smashes it out of his hand. The Eldar leader barely managing to jump back and draw his sword, a crackling arc of energy speeding along its eldritch length.

They fight.

It's an interesting duel. The Eldar leader is all elegant fury and graceful death, his powered blade carving glittering sweeps of destruction through the air. Whilst Taka is savage power and whipcord strength, relying on nothing but quicksilver reflexes to keep himself out of the swords deadly reach and to bring his comparatively crude bladed rifle to bear.

The Eldar has clearly never been in a bar fight before. And Taka has no qualms whatsoever with using every dirty trick in the book. He punches, grabs, bites and screams as loudly as he can.

It's not quite enough, the Eldar leaders sword gives him a marked advantage, the Kroot is forced to fall back.

Then Taka goes back to the absolute basics.

A bionic leg kicks up into the leaders crotch with the force of a piledriver, actually lifting the unfortunate Eldar off of his feet with the sheer strength of the kick. The leaders sword falls from a suddenly limp hand as his body crumples forward in an agonised muscular response – just in time for his head to meet the blunt side of Taka's rifle.

And the sky outside goes dark.

…...

Chaka's eyes flicker open as Thrope rudely slaps him back into consciousness, though from the burning in his cheeks it would seem that this isn't the first of such blows that Thrope has administered.

Thrope's scowl turns into a slight grin upon Chaka's reawakening, he seems about to say something – but a body slams into the ground next to him and Thrope looks up to see a very smug looking Taka standing atop an unconscious Eldar leader. A gently snoring Blocka slumbers away to his right – and a repetitive series of shots behind him testifies as to Wiki's current location.

Everybody's alright.

Thrope is no longer in a bad mood.

And the sky is filled with hundreds of chittering ripperjacks, called forth by the mad joy of Wiki Al'Grash la'Shan.

That...could be a problem.

Thrope stands up.


	6. Chapter 6

**Wiki**

A young girl lies in the sand, knowing that she is going to die.

It's not a difficult conclusion to reach. She's clung to life through seventeen days of baking heat and eighteen nights of freezing cold. She's sucked the moisture out of sand damp with morning condensation and greedily devoured whatever desert insects she's known to not be all that poisonous. Not quite enough to stave off starvation, just delay it. The sand's uncomfortable in the gaps between her ribs.

Her legs gave out last evening. Shelter in the form of a huge boulder is less than a few feet away – might as well be light-years. The sun is going to kill her. She's considered crying over that, decided against it – no point making it easy by wasting whatever little water her failing body's managed to store.

It's getting lighter, already she can feel the sand heating up.

Maybe she should have listened a bit more to what happens to you when you die. It's distinctly unnerving to not know. She knows all about the _process_ of course, seen more than enough people stumble out of the sands for that. The swollen and cracked tongues, the delirium. The bloodshot eyes that say they've been breaking into the cacti and drinking their juice – nobody who did that lasted more than a few hours.

Then again...the only person she knew who might have had a better idea of what to expect after your body stilled is dead now, her parched lips twitch into a smile at that. She still doesn't care about what the village priest liked to do to the other children – but she wasn't going to let him do it to her. She'd even told him so, very clearly. He'd just leered and put his hand around her back.

She'd gotten rather angry at that point. Still doesn't clearly remember what happened.

Screamed, she's certain of that. Thought it might distract him, make him flinch so she could get to his throat with her teeth. Hadn't expected him to recoil like she'd just stuck a red hot iron into his eyes. _Really _hadn't expected him to crumple to the floor, blood leaking from his ears.

_Really really _hadn't expected that massive swarm of ripperjacks to appear right the fuck out of nowhere over the village.

Didn't stop screaming, she remembers that. Remembers thinking that she should have to stop and draw a breath, remembers people stumbling out of her way, remembers the swarm dancing around her body in amazing twists and dives of hundreds of black and yellow bodies.

Remembers feeling powerful.

Remembers blowing open the crude wooden gates, remembers walking in to the desert.

Remembers laughing so hard that her ribs ached and she coughed up blood.

Remembers the swarm vanishing back into the dunes. Running after them.

Remembers wishing that she'd had the presence of mind to grab a bloody waterskin.

She is going to die.

And in the distance...she can hear wings.

…...

Thrope walks towards a madwoman dancing in a maelstrom of wings and teeth. He's made an executive decision to avoid calling himself an idiot until after he gets Wiki to calm down.

Doesn't seem like she's totally lost it – the fact that nobody has a ripperjack planted over their face is a clue.

…...

A slightly older girl tries to stay awake. The weird fumes from the incense these people keep burning make it... difficult to think straight.

Not too difficult though – she's pretty certain that it's intended to interact with whatever stuff they've been putting in her food. Watched the other children for long enough to see the pattern. Part of the reason she hasn't been eating any of it.

The rest of said reason being that the raw rats her ripperjacks keep bringing her outclass the crap put in front of her by these freaks by an order of magnitude.

The woman with bits of metal through her face told the girl that they'd saved her life. That this made her their property. Her logic _is _pretty sound.

Except it wasn't them that saved her.

Still, she can play the part. Act sleepy, act happy, don't respond when the freaky people put things inside each other. Worked so far.

Her ripperjacks are hiding outside the settlement, the freaks shoot at them if they get the chance.

It was the ripperjacks who saved her life, covering her wasted body with their own, the reflective chitin of their armour deflecting the heat of the sun. The biggest female dribbling the protein-rich secretions of her last meal into the girls mouth – it tasted disgusting. Amazing how little that matters when you're starving.

She'd made it under the rock, survived the day. Slept in a pile of warm little bodies. Helped clean them, groom their fur, pry parasites off of their backs. They chitter in what she somehow knows is pleasure when she strokes the back of their heads.

She lived like that for a few weeks.

Then the freaks came. Shot and killed the big female, shot the males that tried to get to them. Didn't even cook them afterwards.

She told the ripperjacks to fly away, to hide. Stumbled out of the sand towards the freaks, played the lost little girl. Could almost _see _the cruel delight bubbling in their brains.

She's going to kill every single one of them.

…...

A wing smacks into Thrope's face with the force of a decently thrown haymaker. The swarm is coalescing as it descends, the ripperjacks flying ever closer to each other.

He wipes blood from his jaw and presses on.

…...

That was almost disappointingly easy. Mixed a waterskins worth of cacti-juice into the vat of paste they plaster themselves with to get high. Some of them are already crying blood as they rut themselves to death – looks like the juice worked to enhance the qualities of the paste, useful.

But something is wrong.

She can feel it, like a tearing sheet of metal inside her mind. The artificially enhanced vigour of the freaks is _calling _something.

She wants to leave, wants to do nothing more than run as fast and as far as she can.

Whatever is coming won't let her.

Space and time crack open, the freaks demented coupling reaches a fever pitch. There's a scream of orgasmic pleasure as eldritch smoke pours from a hole in reality itself.

A gentle pressure tells her to breathe deeply, every single instinct she has tells said pressure to go fuck itself. She holds her breath.

The lady with metal bits in her face rips her own throat out with her fingernails, a spray of arterial blood shoots into the smoke. There's an almighty explosion.

And a new creature stands amongst the settling dust.

To the freaks it is a vision of perfection, a possessor of asymmetrical beauty beyond anything a mortal mind should be able to comprehend.

To the girl it's a white and purple naked lady with a crab claw for a hand.

And it's _very _interested in her.

Vicelike pressure clamps around her limbs as she tries to run. The creature stepping daintily around the spasming bodies of the freaks calling forth a bone-deep fear. Her heart hammers in her ears as it stands in front of her, the bizarrely graceful claw reaching up to gently brush her black hair from her face. The creature almost flows downwards to bring her face in line with the girls. Dark eyes fixing the terrified child in a world of promised torment.

The claw flickers, and faster than the eye can follow the girls cheeks are ripped apart.

The pain is unbearable, she should be screaming. But she can't. And the creature shudders in something like pleasure at her agony. It leans further forward, a long purple tongue snaking towards the girls ruined face.

There are few things in the galaxy more funny than watching a daemonette of Slaanesh - an unholy handmaiden of the prince of pleasure him/herself - get hit square in the face by a ripperjack.

…...

Thrope can't see Wiki anymore – but he can hear her. The laughter is crystal clear – as are the gunshots. He doesn't really want to think about what'll happen when the eldar die.

…...

The ripperjacks fangs can't pierce the unnaturally resilient skin of the creature – but it's more than big enough to make a nuisance of itself. The creature stumbles backwards, smacking the ripperjack to the ground. A snarl of offended pride ruining the twisted serenity her face had previously shown. She skewers the floundering ripperjack with her claw, twisting to rip its wings off and leaving it screaming on the floor.

She turns back to the girl.

And the girl isn't afraid anymore. There isn't enough room for it beside the anger.

She takes a step forward, the psychic bonds that previously bound her shattering like glass before her wrath. Her ruined mouth opens, wider than ever before.

She screams.

Sand on the floor dances. The surviving freaks suffer one final massive convulsion and lay still. Ripperjacks pour down from the sky.

And a daemon writhes on the ground.

She can feel them, her friends. Tens of hundreds of warm little lives, splashes of crimson across the background of her mind. She can sense the muted grey of the drugged children a few dozen feet away. The jagged sense of yellow death from the freaks at her feet.

And she can sense the creature too.

It doesn't have a colour, at least not one she recognises. Behind the humanoid shell dwells a roiling cloud of perverted madness, a being of nothing but twisted desire and inhuman wants. And behind that horrible cloud she can sense where the creature came from. The crack is still there, it looks like it almost has to be. Like the creature _needs _it somehow.

Well, the crack is where it came from. Maybe it should go back.

She pushes. Like when she made the gates open. Anger helps. The creature is slammed into the ground. It flickers – like a bad projection, screams at the girl in a language she doesn't know and yet somehow understands perfectly, promises torment unending, that she will hunt the girls soul across her lords gardens for all time.

She pushes again. The creature is semi-transparent now, and its tone changes. It begs, it howls, it promises riches and pleasure eternal, to be her ever faithful servant if she but lets it remain on this world.

The girl strides forward, squats to look the creature in the eyes once again. She can feel it hammering at her mind, demanding she release it, that she let it in to her own head.

She kicks sand into the creatures eyes, and pushes one last time.

The creature vanishes. The crack does not.

She looks over the mauled ripperjack. It's wings are shredded, it'll never survive. She picks it up, strokes its back, croons to it, does her level best to dull its pain. And as it relaxes, she snaps its neck. Leaves it for the others to eat, criminal to waste food like the freaks did.

Speaking of.

She checks, they're all dead. She checks on the other children. One boy looks more awake than the others, she tells him what happened. Tells him to get them all out of here, find a better place. She doesn't mention the creature. No guarantee he'll even remember she existed in the next 20 minutes or so.

Then she goes back to the crack. It's still open, pulsing in the air. And she's pretty certain that there isn't much stopping another one of those creatures just stepping right on through if it finds the thing. She has to close it.

Problem. She has no idea how.

Pushing it with her mind the same way she pushed the creature has no effect, willing it to close has no effect, shouting at it to close makes it shimmer in time with her voice but doesn't really make any progress towards shutting the damn thing.

Finally she attempts to just grab the edges of the crack and force them back together.

She has just enough time to consider how very bad a decision that was before the vivid flash of green light whisks her out of reality.

…...

Thrope is having to struggle through every single step, lost inside a sea of wings and fangs that seem willing to inflict anything but lethal damage. The temptation to call upon his own psychic might and start swatting the things out of the sky is nearly overwhelming.

But if Thrope does that...odds are that Wiki will never forgive him.

…...

The Tyrant Lord of For'Kesh is nothing special, not really. He _was _a planetary governor for the imperium of man, dutifully collecting and sending his quota from the various hive-cities dotting his planet. He _was _a loyal subject of the Emperor.

Then the nice voice started whispering in his dreams, and it was suddenly so clear that he deserved far more than a mere single planet. So he took some more. And then some more. And then some more. First by guile and false righteousness, later by force and bloody-minded power – and finally by simple straightforward terror.

Almost twenty planets now fall within his grasp, and still he finds himself wanting more.

But ambition must occasionally take a back-seat to amusement. And the recently constructed arena (the first of many he's sure) should offer exactly what he now finds himself needing.

Enslaved men and woman are given rags to wear, rusty knives to hold, force-fed a horrible concoction of psychosis-inducing drugs and rudely shoved out on to the floor to tear each other apart in a frenzy of induced bloodlust, the survivors being allowed just enough time for the drugs to wear off and the impact of what they have just done to hit them before the next batch are released on to the floor, killing the by now howling survivors and then each other to repeat the cycle again and again and again.

At least that's what _should _be happening. One young woman doesn't seem to have read the script.

She stands rather listlessly on the arena floor, a discarded knife lying at her feet, dead eyes lazily watching both the crowd and her fellow "competitors." She seems almost bored by what she sees.

Then a teenage boy tries to stab her – and the crowd roars as she steps around his clumsy thrust, casually knocks the knife from his hand, opens her horrifically scarred jaws farther than a human should ever be able to and tears his throat out with her teeth.

She licks blood from her lips and resumes the watching.

And the Tyrant Lord is intrigued.

A wave of his hands and the flood of slaves dies away, the arena custodians moving to deliver a lethal electric shock with their massively overcharged cattle-prods to those few who survive. But the Lord waves them away from the girl.

He asks "What is your name?" His voice echoing around the silenced arena.

She replies, her words in a bland and level tone that nonetheless reaches the ears of all who see her speak "If you are strong, you may give me one."

And she stares into the eyes of the Tyrant Lord.

The human in him shrieks and gibbers in fear, pounding at the walls of his mind to escape what every instinct he has left tells him is an implacable predator.

But the human stopped being a majority shareholder quite some time ago.

It rises behind his eyes, an ancient being of rage and strife, caring nothing for the petty concerns of a dull human, caring only that through him it can make the blood flow eternal.

Two pairs of eyes gaze at each other across a floor of crimson dirt, one an unending scourge of the twisted currents of the warp, the other a human mind that simply knows it has already seen the very worst that its own life has to offer.

The girl clawed her way out of the warp two days ago, to an unfamiliar planet in an unfamiliar body. She's pretty certain it's hers – just aged a few years forward.

She's learned an awful lot since the day she attempted to close a rift with her bare hands, spoken to some of the entities that wander that otherworldly ocean. Killed quite a few others. Done horrific things to survive. She knows exactly what is hiding behind the hollow visage of a planetary governor – and she knows that it is strong.

Right now? She needs that strength.

And the unnamed girl bows her head to a daemon.

…...

Wiki has stopped laughing, that's generally a bad sign. All Thrope has to go on now are the gunshots, regular as clockwork.

Thrope speeds up.

…...

Al'Grash La'Shan has been a dog for nearly ten years. In that time she has conquered planets, murdered thousands and been responsible for the deaths of millions more. She has imprinted the sounds of her scream and howling laughter onto the nightmares of an entire system.

It isn't her problem, a dog doesn't get to choose who it bites.

Her leaving of the warp was not without difficulty, the daemonette she banished all those years ago made good on her threat to hunt her down, and it bought friends. Even outside the warp it isn't safe to be herself, to think her own thoughts – least the Slaaneshi legions taste her essence and strain themselves to reach her.

So she gave her decisions to something else. Something strong enough that its taint more than blots out her own scent. A daemon of Khorne was almost exactly what she'd been hoping for.

It commands her to fight, she fights, to kill, she kills.

To love the sensation of death and agony? That one took a little work. But ten years is more than enough to acquire a taste for pretty much anything.

But now she has a problem.

…...

Thrope forces his way into the eye of the storm. Wiki's expression would not be out of place on a corpse. She methodically sends bullet after bullet into the still-healing flesh of the howling banshee, a near-dead warlock still managing to pull his teammate back together. Even when Thrope gently pulls her arm downwards Wiki's trigger finger sends three more shots into the ground before finally relaxing.

…...

The Tyrant Lord is dead, the daemon banished back to the warp. And Al'Grash La'Shan does not know what to do.

The man who killed the Tyrant Lord has his back to her, his flesh still cooling from the white heat that covered his entire body.

The Tyrant Lord is dead.

His killer turns to face her, he looks ready to fight. She supposes she'd better kill him.

The Tyrant Lord is dead.

Her arms won't move.

The Tyrant Lord is dead.

His killer takes one look at her face, and lowers his arms. His expression isn't one she's seen much of before. It isn't terror, not hate, not anger. He looks almost...sad.

_The Tyrant Lord is dead._

How is she supposed to hide now?

How long will she have before they come for her?

Is this man going to kill her?

Why are her arms shaking?

"Oh hells," says the man who killed the Tyrant Lord, and he walks over to her.

She can feel them already, scratching at her head, her heart, her soul. She's got minutes, maybe less, and reality is weak here. They won't have any trouble dragging her back to those damned gardens. She'd much prefer to die first.

"Chiku." Says the man who has doomed her to torment unending, as he nears her frozen body.

And there is a young girl sitting on her shoulder. She was not there before.

The girls holds on to Al'Grash La'Shan's head and cranes herself round to look into her eyes.

Chiku's eyes are red and green, with slit and tilted pupils. She stares at La'Shan for a few seconds.

Then she smiles, and pats her on the head.

And the scratching dies away.

…...

Thrope holds Wiki by the shoulders, slowly turning her to face him.

…...

Chiku has vanished again, La'Shan faces the killer of the Tyrant Lord.

His voice is rough around the edges, but slow and clear. "Ain't never seen a daemon-hunt as bad as that one was lass, yer must av' held em' off fer bloody years. Not something I'd much like to try."

He asks "What is your name?" in a voice she can barely hear over the explosions outside.

She replies in a broken whisper, an answer half remembered by rout. "If you are strong, you may give me one."

He cocks his head to the side, "aye lass, reckon I am pretty strong at that. But I don't go in fer _givin'_ people names. Pretty certain I know who yer are anyway – La'Shan right?"

She nods.

"But that ain't yer _name _is it?" he asks. "Just somethin' that steamin' pile a' crap I just sent cryin' to his big red momma called yer cause he thought it sounded right purdy." He looks her right in the eyes "I want to know yer _name _lass, be it the one yer parents gave ya or one you choose yerself."

He holds out a burned and bleeding hand.

"Name's Thrope. What's yours?"

And Wiki tells him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Raid**

Wiki would never lower herself to crying – but the gradual re-emergence of a somewhat fragile psyche is unpleasant enough that there is the ever so slight chance of her eyes inadvertently generating too much moisture, naturally enough this _cannot _be seen. By anyone. Thus why Wiki is crouched – huddled really – in the corner of a deserted building a bit more than a kilometre north of the archeotech horde. If anyone was brave enough to ask she _might _claim that she was keeping watch, alternatively she might quite literally rip their heads off. Nobody has asked.

She knows she's not really alone anyway, Blocka turned up a few hours ago, set up a snipers perch in the floor above her and promptly fell asleep. Thrope's downstairs ostensibly checking out some weird engravings he noticed on the journey back from the previous excursion. Chiku is almost certainly around somewhere – she tends to gravitate toward either Thrope or Wiki. Taka and Slick are somewhere in a neighbouring building.

Then there are the ripperjacks. Round about two thousand of them. Nestled in to just about every single nook and cranny the ruins have to offer, every one of them emitting a constant low croon, vibrations reverberating through the building with the sheer quantity of sound.

Long brown hair falling around her scarred face, knees clutched to her chest, surrounded by entities she will never ever EVER admit to being more than acquaintances, Wiki sobs herself back into existence, tears of self-acknowledgement slowly driving Al'Grash La'Shan back into the corners of her mind.

She senses everything around her, the crimson glows of her ripperjacks so concentrated that the building itself is outlined in red, Thrope's muted white flame moves beneath her and Blocka's slumbering earthiness reclines above. The dirty green of Slick and the blue spark of Taka just slightly further afield, even Chiku shows up – a small void of nothingness in the cacophony of life.

And two small flickers of gleaming silver. Accompanied by several flecks of grey that can only be Tau.

The Eldar are trying to be sneaky. Again.

Enough.

Wiki hauls herself to her feet, wipes a brown sleeve across her eyes, bathes in the reassuring presence of her family for a few more precious seconds, a private smile momentarily striking her face with a splash of unexpected beauty before she tilts back her head and takes a deep breath.

A sonic current of life sweeps through the ruins, a vicious wave of pure exhilaration that jump charges the brain and rampages through the blood.

Blocka snaps back to full alertness, instantly sweeping the sights of his weapon over the open field of sand.

A brilliant flash of white flame emerges from the lower floors, accompanied by Thrope's raw throaty laughter.

Taka whoops an ecstaticly ululating battle cry to the sky, unslinging his shotgun.

Three swords – one a gleaming Eldar blade - rasp out of three scabbards, their hilts each in the grip of a furiously grinning three-armed man.

Chiku sits on the shoulders of a burning man, a gentle smile on her silent lips.

Thousands of ripperjacks explode into the sky, their previous crooning transformed into terrifying shrieks of adoring welcome.

It is the sound of a falcons triumph at a kill, the howling of a wolfen king, the roar of the greatest champion, the primal scream of a defending mother.

It is a sound the galaxy has had the misfortune to not hear for many years. It is the sound that banished a daemon, the sound that once desecrated and destroyed a significant portion of the lord of pleasures gardens, the sound that first drew her greatest friends to her side.

It is the song of Wiki Draknok, a farm girl who refused to let her body belong to anyone but her, a human who survived the warp itself, a woman who escaped a daemon-hunt and earned the enmity of a god.

And it says that SHE. IS. BACK.

…...

A cloud of ripperjacks sweeps into the sky, the red plume of an Eldar Banshee and the shimmering cloak of a ranger obviously apparent to their multifaceted eyes.

The comm in Thrope's armour buzzes. "Eldar, two, banshee and ranger, looks like they roped the Tau into their own bloody mess as well – think they're after their leader?"

"Aye lass, ah reckon they likely ain't figured on the speed ah Taka's mates. Think yer friends can keep the Tau busy? Thinkin' they ain't exactly got all the details here."

"Probably, there hasn't been this many of them since...well, a long time. You want sword girl left alone?"

"And here ah was thinkin' readin' minds was our little Chiku's trick. Thanks. Yer got a handle on where our suicidal elves be headin'?"

"Oh yes, Banshee's coming down the middle of the buildings – likely coming for me. Ranger's going around to the east, maybe trying to line up a shot on you."

"Good. Everyone else get that?"

"Got it." Slick.

"Acknowledged." Blocka.

"Good hunting to all." Taka.

Chiku nods emphatically.

"Right. An' everyone? Yeh might say ah'm getting' just the littlest bit tired of the arrogant little sods attempting to pry into our business. We break them, right now."

He clicks to a more private band.

"Wiki."

"Yes?"

"Yer back with us there?"

"Suppose I must be."

"Good, I need you keepin' a tight handle on yer friends, just put em between us and the Tau. No killin' unless absolutely necessary, if my plan pays off we'll not be wantin' anymore bad blood."

"I can do that, won't be much good for fighting though."

"Tis alright lass. And Wiki?"

"Hmm?"

"Welcome back lass."

"Don't make me kill you, old man."

She clicks off. Thrope's eyes close as he smiles, a hidden tension flowing out of molten shoulders. He clicks off.

…...

The Eldar ranger presses himself against the eastern wall of a ruin, his cloak blending him almost perfectly into the pale rock. He readies his rifle and sweeps round the corner.

And Taka receives glorious confirmation that he is indeed faster than an Eldar.

A shotgun blast hits the ranger at murderously short range, a bloody wreck collapsing to the ground.

Somehow still breathing, the ranger manages to crack open his one remaining eye. There is a three-armed man standing over him, the man holds three swords, two of which cross over the eldars throat. There is nothing even approaching mercy in his bearded face.

An open-mouthed Eldar head rolls along the ground.

…...

The Banshee seems to know what happened to her compatriot. It appears to have made her quite angry. Blocka shoots her. Twice. The toxins in his darts do not appear to have any effect.

Slick kicks the rangers head around the corner, in front of the banshee. He strides after it, motioning Taka to stay back.

The mask of the banshee hides whatever expressions must be flitting across her face. She screams as she charges – the mask artificially enhancing her battle cry to a level that should make the nervous system of any sentient being cringe in pain.

It's nothing compared to the noises Wiki can make.

Slick doesn't even bother to ready his swords, he's seen the slight distortion Chiku makes in the air when she doesn't want to be noticed. The banshee hasn't.

She makes it about halfway towards Slick before her muscles stop obeying her. Swords fall from nerveless hands – but the banshee doesn't have time to hit the ground.

In an explosion of red-hot masonry a glowing hand bursts through a wall and seizes the eldar around the throat. Stone boils into lava as Thrope emerges from the building, the molten fingers of his other hand tearing off the banshee's mask before he lifts the eldars curiously unburned face to his own, glaring into her eyes.

The burning man looks angry. You can tell – his accent's gone.

"Three times. Three times our paths have crossed. First in alliance, where we kept our word. Second in betrayal, where you broke with us and suffered the consequences. And now Third, where you come again. This time in stupid, blind, utterly nearsighted ARROGANCE. So much so that it does not even occur to you that last we met I **LET. YOU. GO.**"

The eldar chokes back into motion, her fingers scrabbling at an unflinching arm of fire that feels merely warm to the touch. She might as well grasp at a mountain for the good it does. Thrope lowers his voice, such that only the eldar can hear.

"I hold my oaths, I protect my own. In my rage at your actions I nearly cost myself a woman who is my daughter in all but blood. I say to you now, child of the race that spawned the most depraved of evils, creature of those who hold themselves above all others as they drown in the dust of their own legends. _No_. _More_."

Thrope's arms glow brightens. The skin of the eldar's neck begins to blister. Still Thrope speaks in a near whisper.

"No more will you pursue me or mine, no more will you attempt to plunder my secrets, no more will you beguile others into doing your own filthy handiwork. You want a secret? Here is one."

He leans in to the bubbling face, the eldar is trying to scream in agony – no sound is coming out.

"The body is not all that I can burn."

And the local warpspace rushes to fill a void where an eldar soul once hung.

Thrope's body cools as he drops the banshee's partially melted corpse. The stink of burning flesh invading everyone's nostrils.

Thrope clicks his comm open, wide-band, he needs to speak to the Tau.


End file.
